Mpumalanga Biodiversity Conservation Plan Handbook - bgis-sanbi

MPUMALANGA BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION PLAN HANDBOOK
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African Fish Eagle
Haliaeetus vocifer
The fish eagle has one of
Africa’s most characteristic
calls. It is widespread
over the continent south
of the Sahara but absent
from the North western
Cape, Namaqualand and
southern Namibia. It is
quite common in the
Lowveld of Mpumalanga.
The wingspan of females
approaches 2.5 metres.
The birds feed primarily
on fish and have in some
places become key tourist
attractions, feeding
willingly on dead fish
thrown into the water.
They also eat terrapins,
waterfowl and baby
crocodiles.
To measure the effectiveness of a PA network it is necessary to first determine how biodiversity
is distributed across the landscape. Once we know what occurs where, we can analyse how
well the current network captures the full range of known biodiversity. However, it is not
enough simply to know how much biodiversity is being protected. Questions such as which
PAs are contributing the most to conservation and how unprotected areas can contribute to
the overall biodiversity protection task, also need to be answered.
TYPES AND GROUPS OF PROTECTED AREAS
Mpumalanga’s 45 formal PAs are state owned and managed. There are 115 additional,
informal PAs comprising private land committed in one way or another to conservation. The
informal PAs may be further subdivided on the basis of their legal and administrative security
(see Groups 1 to 3 below). There are 18 private reserves that are actively managed, relatively
secure and formalised. The remaining 97 PAs are informally conserved areas whose current
and future status is uncertain. Together this forms an extended PA network of sufficient significance
that the full 160 PAs deserve to be assessed for their combined contribution to
provincial biodiversity conservation. Details of the extended PA network are provided in
Appendix 3 and summarised in Table 5.2. In outline it comprises the following:
FORMAL / INFORMAL GROUP NO TYPES OF PROTECTED AREA
Formal protected areas Group 1 45 National Parks; Provincial Parks
and Nature Reserves
Private protected areas Group 2 18 Municipal, Private and leasedland
Nature Reserves
Unsecured protected areas Group 3 97 SA Natural Heritage Sites;
Conservancies on private or
state land.
TYPES OF BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENT
The MBCP provides for two different types of assessment:
The main assessment of the MBCP (Chapter 4) examined the protection levels of
biodiversity features across the entire Province, together with an analysis of
priority biodiversity areas. Protected areas (mainly formal) were included, but
only for assessing the amount of each biodiversity feature currently protected.
This analysis did not attempt to assess the value within and between protected
areas. In effect each PA was treated as a single planning unit for the purpose of
the analysis. The focus of this type of assessment is to identify biodiversity outside
the PA network for cooperative stewardship programmes or other conservation
initiatives, such as ensuring sustainable development.
The purpose of the PA assessment is to determine the contribution of each PA towards
meeting biodiversity targets. However, this assessment first examined at the level
of protection that each vegetation type was afforded within the formal PA
network. Then the extended network was assessed in terms of each PA’s contribution
towards meeting biodiversity targets (as explained in Chapter 4). This
M P U M A L A N G A
provided an assessment of how well the current PA network is doing in meeting
Biodiversity
biodiversity targets, as well as identifying opportunities outside current PAs, where
protection of biodiversity needs strengthening. As a foundation for the PA assessment,
the location, extent and status of all formal and informal PAs in the
Province were determined (see Appendix 3).
CONSERVATION PLAN HANDBOOK